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The last several years have been good for criminal hackers and bad for consumers. From last year's unprecedented string of major retailer breaches to the massive JP Morgan hack and Sony's epic debacle, hackers have been almost unstoppable. So what should consumers expect for 2015?

For the most part, of course, technology today makes our lives simpler. Except when someone won't get off of our cloud, and we feel, as my friend said after losing her iPad, "lost, stupid, untethered, paranoid and violated."

In that bygone era of punched cards and tabulating machines, a computer disaster might have been a dropped box of cards. We couldn't do anything very exotic with these simple machines; the Internet and home computers were in no one's crystal ball, but neither was the worry of getting hacked.

I bet it was much more difficult to leak nudes back in the "oughts" and early twentieth century. You couldn't sit all day and night in a dark room with Slayer playing in the background. Leaking photographs of Theda Bara or Anna Pavlova took time and patience.

As smartphones are increasingly used for financial transactions, sharing sensitive personal and proprietary information, and for operating other devices (such as home security systems), the field for intruders grows and becomes increasingly attractive.

The U.S. has spent billions on cyber security, yet the problem is worsening. America's political leaders worry about a cyber "Pearl Harbor." Secretary of Defense Hagel, in his first major speech on the subject, is promising to triple the staff working to combat cyber terrorism. But will it work?

These powerful paths for connectivity have played a significant role in the destabilizing of authoritarian regimes. Yet with the power of social media come the perils of espionage and the temptation of apathy.